


The Witch's Spire

by radpol (orphan_account)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Multi, Original work - Freeform, lgbtq+ fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 08:07:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20132131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/radpol
Summary: Mama Yaga was dead.Gale knew this was true the moment they woke up. Outside birds were singing, narrow bands of golden sunlight filtered into the hut through cracks in the window covers, and Mama Yaga was dead.------When the only mother Gale has ever known dies in her cot, Gale knows that they have to leave their home What they do not know is that leaving will set them on a collision course with an escaped prisoner, a desperate princess, and the most powerful witch ever to walk the land.





	The Witch's Spire

**Author's Note:**

> posting my rough draft to keep me accountable and maybe get some feedback. queer YA fantasy.

Mama Yaga was dead.

Gale knew this was true the moment they woke up. Outside birds were singing, narrow bands of golden sunlight filtered into the hut through cracks in the window covers, and Mama Yaga was dead.

Gale lay in their cot for a moment and considered just trying to fall back asleep. Maybe when they woke up it would be different. Mama Yaga would be alive, irritable as usual, sitting in her rocking chair by the fireplace and snapping at Gale to start breakfast. She had never liked to be hungry. Even when there was no food in their tiny shared hut she would gnaw at bones just to have something to chew.

Gale couldn't fall back asleep. The world was alive and moving around them and as much as they would have liked to their was no stopping or reversing the inexorable flow of time. Mama Yaga was dead and that would not change, no matter how long they hid beneath the deer pelt they used as a blanket. They had to rise and face the day, and every day that would follow it, even if they would be doing it all alone.

Her body lay in her cot, still and quiet in a way Mama Yaga had rarely been when she was alive. It looked as if she were only asleep, eyes closed and face slack, skin still very slightly warm.

They ran a palm once over the fine white hair that still remained on her head and they allowed themselves a long moment to look at her face one last time, etching the fine lines and wrinkles of it into their memory, the prominence of her brow and the curved shape of her hook-like nose. When they were certain they couldn’t stare any longer, they leaned in and pressed their mouth against the cool surface of her forehead.

"Goodbye," they whispered and then, because it was true and because it was the last time they would ever get to say it to the last lingering part of her that existed beside them, "I love you."

Mama Yaga had been old for as long as Gale had known her. They had both known she would die first and that Gale would be forced to live on without her. But knowing that and facing the reality of her death were two different beasts.

If she had not told them clearly what she wanted, Gale would not have known what to do without her. 

But the instructions had been explicit and Gale did know what to do.

There were still a few live coals burning in the fireplace. Gale plucked one from ashes and cupped it in their palm. It burned a dull red and flared orange when they blew on it, casting a few sparks into the air.

Their home was little more than a single room hut. They'd lived in it alongside Mama Yaga all their life. Now that she is gone, the structure was obsolete.

There’d been no rain for days and the reed thatch of the roof was dry as a bone. It caught fire beautifully. Tongues of red flame spread across the ceiling and reached for the walls as Gale stepped outside. They took nothing with them. 

Only minutes after it went up in flame the whole thing collapsed in on itself with a shower of orange and red sparks. Gale watched it burn until it was only embers. then, when it was over they began to walk. 

Every part of the world outside their forest was equally unfamiliar to them so they chose no direction in particular. For many miles their feet knew the ground intimately, in the way only someone who's spent years walking in the same place could. But eventually the moss and the roots, the branches and grass beneath them were all strangers to Gale.

They thought about turning back, but they knew that the only thing waiting for them was a square on the ground filled with rubble and ash. They supposed that was why Mama Yaga had asked them to burn it all when she died, to force them forward and out, away from who they were and where they'd been. It wasn't a bad plan, that. 

The trees began to thin and then all at once there were no more trees in front of them, only rolling land covered in very long grass. Eventually Gale found before them a great deal of water that stretched all the way out until it met with the sky. They looked down and saw that in the distance below them the water met with the land as well, pushing up the cliffside below in great crashes of white foam. 

Gale did not know how to swim. The shallow well that sat beside their home was the largest body of water they'd ever seen before this. They peered over the edge at the waves dashing up against the rocks. They looked behind them at the path they’d cut, straight away from the ashes of the only home they had ever known. There was no returning to that. They stepped back very slowly from the ledge and then, with a running start, they leapt forward and over the edge, dropping into the waiting sea below.


End file.
